Live Recording of “My Man’s Got the Blues”
My Man’s Got the Blues is the cry of Job’s wife after they lost all their children as well as their livelihood.
Quizzes, Trick Questions, and Answers that Aren’t
I read some posts recently related to a quiz that was given (just for fun) on a songwriting board I visit occasionally ( www.christiansongwriters.org ). Most of the posts were in the vein of “my answer was counted wrong, but it’s correct because…” .
Having worked for quite a few years in technical training, I can tell you that writing questions that cannot be miscontrued is one of the hardest things you can do. If you’re successful at it, you are a very good test writer.How you define something makes all the difference in how a question will be interpreted. Most …
Notes on Job
From Walter Brueggamann’s “Introduction to the Old Testament”
· Undated – uses older genres and patterns of speech and fashions them into the most artistic and practical statement of faith in the O.T.
· Challenges the basic premises of Israel’s faith
· Refuses easy resolution
· Composed mostly of lament and hymn, which is pushes to an “emotional, artistic, and theological extremity”
· An immensely sophisticated and artistic work that is removed from any particular historical context or crisis
In “Reading the Bible Again for the First Time”, Marcus Borg says that if we read Job searching for an answer to why good people suffer, we …
2-point takeaway
If there are any main “points” that I think you need to come away from a study of Job with, I think they would be…
1. No matter what you believe to be true ‘about’ God, you could be wrong; and,
2. God is. Deal with it.
The majority of the book of Job, in all of its excellence and poetry, is comprised of Job’s friends extolling the virtues of their particular brand of theology/philosophy/belief system. For the greater part of his life, Job believed pretty much as they did.
But then his experience challenged his belief.
It is precisely in this challenge that God is revealed …
Misunderstood is an Understatement
I think Job must be one of the most misunderstood books in the Bible. I’ve sat through several studies of it and undertaken several more on my own. I’ve been constantly amazed at the range of opinions and declarations about what it “teaches”. I suppose that’s true of much of the Bible, but Job seems to be one book that you can use to support whatever preconceived notions you’d like to assign to it.
A couple of examples: